Within server technology, the design of server racks is important to the function of power and electrical components in a server. In current rack design, a single back plane board is installed in the rack. A back plane (or backplane) is a simple motherboard designed with a number of minimal components, which can be connected and managed together in parallel. It typically serves as the interface for all of the major components within a server unit. A back plane is designed to allow major components to be added or removed with a small amount of effort. A back plane contains both passive components, such as the power supply, and active components, including integrated circuit components. This single back plane handles the management of each chassis installed in the rack. A typical back plane can contain connectors for a variety of components, including an input/output board, fans, processor boards, memory modules, and more.
In general, once the back plane fails and needs to be replaced with another back plane, it is typically necessary to shut down the power supply which is connected to it. However, other critical components of the server rack, such as cooling fans, also typically have their power supplied through this back plane as well. Accordingly, such components cannot function during the replacement of the back plane. This may lead to a number of problems, since the continuous operation of a server and its components may be essential to businesses and technical processes. This can lead to costly delays and loss of time and resources. High-availability and mission-critical systems such as servers need to be designed for near-zero downtime throughout their useful life. Several industries depend on constant server operation, including medical informatics, nuclear power, financial institutions, and persistent online games. Potential loss of data due to system outages can be significant, especially in applications which rely on massive, real-time data collection. In addition, data corruption can occur, leading to unexpected problems even several months after an outage. In some instances, back plane failure may result in loss of power to the fan modules while other components continue to operate. This can result in the running server chassis being placed at risk of damage, due to the absence of cooling from the deactivated fans.